The Pannaga comprise the highest caste among Snake Men and the mightiest among them naturally make up the generals and warleaders of the Snake Men armies. The Kobra Ssamdek or Chieftains are the enforcers of the Blood Naga Queens' will, leading the serpent hosts to battles where the Naga are disinclined to show or preoccupied elsewhere. Enhanced with Chaos energies, these mighty four-armed beings are possessed of a keen intellect, quick reflexes and vicious fighting prowess. Eldest of their kind, the Kobra Ssamdek only get stronger with age and can only be slain by violence.
These Lords among the Snake Men are supremely dexterous and capable of wielding three or four deadly weapons simultaneously, all coated in venom lethal enough to kill with a scratch. Long millennia of combat and supernatural balance have given the Pannaga a fighting style that is mystifying in its coordination: ensorcelled great crescent-shaped Warpstone axes or mak halberds are swung in tandem with parang blades or the kris and karambit daggers.
It is not uncommon to see these leaders effortlessly engaging multiple opponents at once, butchering those who manage to break through the longer reach of their polearms with their shorter blades, before feasting on the resulting gore. The Naja Chieftains are possibly even deadlier combatants, for they also exhibit the venom-spitting ability of the Naja caste.
Faced with a particularly strong foe or prey they would rather capture, the Kobra Ssamdek will weaken the target with a hypnotizing gaze and hissing reverberation. This tends to reduce the Chieftains' combat awareness and distracts them from leading their forces, so they tend to employ hypnotism at the closing stages of a battle or when their victim is isolated. Those especially vexing to the Kobra Ssamdek may find themselves constricted with muscular tails and subjected to a slow asphyxiating death of pulped organs, burst eyes and crushed bone.
When not slithering into battle, the Kobra Chieftains can be found commanding their hosts from atop one of the Ratha chariots pulled by the devolved Uraga Lizardmen or atop the hulking Makor. Some ancient and accomplished leaders have even been known to fly atop the arcane Vimanaga arks, dictating the flow of battle at bird's-eye view while engaging airborne threats and opposing leaders.
Another curious trait of the Kobra Ssamdeks is their unconscious ability to absorb magical energies that permeate the environment into their bodies, taking on traits associated with the Winds of Magic as the ages pass. Laturedano, the commanding Pannaga General of the Ebon Stone marga from warpstone-saturated southern Khuresh, has been infused with enough Dhar that his scales have turned a shiny coal-black interspersed with nacreous hues, while his necrotic venom causes wounds that cannot be healed with magic and imbue horrific mutations on his prey. Satra-King Taxsakil, Pannaga leader of the Amaranthine Lotus marga, is so suffused with the Red Wind of Aqshy that his red-hot scales smoke and crackle like embers, while his weapons spontaneously catch fire in combat and immolate enemies that make contact with them.
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